Before we start this podcast, I want to say that every project I have pretty much has
a village behind it, and this one is no exception.
I want to thank the patrons who stepped in on my Kickstarter to really make sure that
this got off the ground.
Denise Grady, Caden White-Wattam, Amanda Peake, Todd A. Davis, Jay Grant, and Corey
Watson.
Without you guys, I wouldn't be sitting here talking with the awesome guest that I'm
about to talk to.
Thank you so much.
Welcome to It's Your Lost podcast, where raw stories of resilience and healing are
told, all while uncovering and destigmatizing the diverse symptoms of loss.
Welcome back to the podcast.
I'm your host, Michael LeBlanc, and if you missed last month's episode, well, it's
your loss.
Today is a little bit different because it's just me.
I don't have anybody sitting across from me or on Zoom.
It's just me in a chair, leaning forward as close as I can to this mic and sharing my
own story of loss, resilience, growth, why I'm doing this.
Maybe we can get to know each other a little better over this proverbial cup of coffee.
Settle in.
Let's talk about the things that I've lost and how I wound up being here.
First in 2016, I faced the first big loss of my life.
My mother passed away due to COPD.
Basically she was breathing in, but every time she breathed out, there was a lot of
CO2 that just decided to stay in her body.
She wound up passing away quietly in her sleep.
The home that she was living in in Oklahoma, they called me and said that she had passed
away.
I think that's when it really started shaping the perspective of my life and ways that I
just never had really thought of.
That became a turbulent journey of finding out what grief was, finding out what depression
was, trying to search for the meaning of life more than I had already done up to that point.
And then around that time, I lost the status of my relationship.
Me and my ex, we had grown, become different people and realized that we were better friends
than we ever were spouses.
Going through that separation and my mom passing away at the same time, it not only added a
layer to my loss, it was a shift of learning how to cope with emotional stress.
I learned how to cope mainly through humor at first.
In fact, when I found out the day that my mom had passed, I called my ex-wife, we were
separated at the time, and said, hey, guess who has two thumbs and no mom.
The silence on the other end of the phone was deep.
And I just said me, a little strained voice.
I got up that day and started ironing my shirts.
I called my brother or he called me, I don't remember which one.
He could hear the ironing board in the background, he's like, are you okay?
I think it's at that point I realized I wasn't.
I lit out of one of the most weirdest twisted sounds I think I've ever made, the sound of
the beginning of a sob and a groan and a yell all at the same time, just pure anguish coming
out of my throat.
I've never made that sound since.
I've come close, but not the same way that happened when I lost my mom.
I heard somebody else make that sound very recently.
It triggered the same deep existential pain that I was feeling at that time, the first
time I made that sound.
It's haunting that sound.
So two losses down, six years later, my father, who I had always had a strained relationship
as we had grown older, had begun to realize in my adult years that my mom was my favorite
parent.
I've always talked more about details than I think I'd ever talked about with my dad,
including my sexuality and the way that I view the world.
Dad and I basically had a passing casual conversation relationship that almost always ended in him
asking for money, adding a strain to our relationship that I just could never look past.
Eventually, after I told him that I would always pick up the phone after mom had passed
away because we were going to fix our relationship, it got to the point where I'm just watching
the phone ring until it stops or stopped past tense.
You know, life has a way of throwing curveballs at us.
Not only did those losses happen, like physical losses that are attached to people, I also
lost jobs, as a lot of us did during the pandemic in 2020.
I lost two jobs during that year.
If it hadn't been for the fact that we were in a situation where other people were in
the same boat, I probably would have felt a little bit more dejected than I did.
I did feel really weird about having to reach out for assistance for money or anything like
that.
There were a lot of emotions going through me at that time.
As I'm sure there were a lot of turbulent and upsetting situations happening all over
the world, it just struck me that my sense of identity and stability could just be rocked
like that just by a couple of motions that basically I had no control over, vice controlling
my own exposure to other people and monitoring my health.
But it's not like I caused the pandemic, but it sure was just affecting me nonetheless.
The world was moving around, my life was getting changed, and I felt so useless at times.
But all of these challenges prompted shifts and coping mechanisms.
I began to see myself as a member of clubs that were letting me in because certain events
had let me in.
Like, I was now in the Dead Parents Club.
I was now in the One Divorce Under My Belt Club.
I was now in the Oop, I've Had COVID Club.
Though I do still sometimes pull from those just to get a laugh or to let people know
that I am in a healed or healing situation when it comes to thinking about the things
that I've lost.
It's still kind of an evolving thing where I'm deciding to have more serious conversations
sometimes and using the jokes more as antidotes so I can actually interact with people and
let them know that, hey, I hear you, I'm listening, I can be empathetic, I can be sympathetic
too.
The hits just kept coming during this time.
All I was trying to get all of this in my mind and like, okay, my 30s are going to be
just the decade of loss.
My body was like, you know what, we're going to give you a little bit more grief.
We're going to evict your gallbladder.
And that was a process all on its own of long nights sitting with a heating pad on my right
hand side above my ribs thinking that I had some kind of weird gas problem until eventually
I went to the doctor and they were giving me my ultrasound and when I asked them, hey,
how does it look in there?
She said, well, I don't have the ability to diagnose you.
I do, however, know that you can live without a gallbladder.
I took the hint and realized that I was about to lose my gallbladder and that changed some
physical aspects in my life.
It changed a part of my diet and then I wound up getting diabetes.
A lot of things happened in between my 30s and 40s.
It not only shaped me into this person that I am now behind the microphone.
It shaped me into a different person dealing with people day to day.
I think it gave me more empathy and it gave me more understanding of what people may go
through because each one of those different losses, I went through the stages of grief
for each one.
I mean, obviously for the ones of my parents, to a lesser degree, I went through the same
thing with my dad.
I had so much bargaining, anger and depression, grief, acceptance, all of it.
I had all five stages when it came to my divorce.
That's because I was really thinking that this was going to be the relationship that
was going to continue on.
But then again, I always thought that even though my parents who had various health problems
of their own, I thought that they were going to continue on.
Turns out I wasn't really good at sudden unexpected change in my life.
I guess as humans, we really aren't all that adept at dealing with change.
But well, those threw me for a loop.
To deal with that change, to deal with that loss, to deal to cope, right?
Not only was I using humor, but I was also using content creation.
It started shortly after my mom passed away, where I would go on these long walks and just
let my brain wander.
And then I would sit down with the phone's camera facing me and I would vent about whatever
my brain had been fixated on during that 45 minute walk.
And then I would put those videos up on Facebook.
People started liking them.
One thing led to another on doing short form videos on TikTok during the pandemic because
everybody was.
And from there, I started a podcast.
I really feel like creation is such a large part of my healing process as well.
Not only am I doing that, but I was writing as well too.
So I mean, I keep myself busy on a rotating schedule of projects.
They offer catharsis.
They offer reflection, these projects that I do, especially the book, which I feel like
is a good time ever to talk about this podcast and how this broadcast is brought to you by
that's right.
This ad read right here.
Hey, this is Michael LeBlanc, your guide through it's your loss podcast.
Before we delve back in, this is a reminder that my memoir, Dink, D&D in the coffin hold
of the USS Enterprise is available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble as a ebook and as a
paperback on Amazon.
It's a memoir from the ages of five to 23 and a journey through all the losses, triumph
and magic that tabletop RPGs gave me to help me keep sane and to heal.
Grab your copy because your support keeps this queth podcasting and exploring loss alive.
Now let's get back to the story unfolding on it's your loss podcast.
Okay, so maybe it's not really brought to you by the book, but when you have a podcast
and you don't have a lot of sponsors, you got to pretty much sponsor yourself.
I hope you guys get a chance to read that because a lot of these things that I'm talking
about right now come out in that in such a magical way for me.
I felt so much lighter when I finally finished it and I hit publish.
There's a little bit of humor in there as well because I can't let go of that.
And not only that, it helped me face some traumas in my life that I don't normally bring
up in everyday conversation.
Things like abuse my mom's hands, a really bad car wreck that won't damaging my ex-wife
way more than I got damaged.
I got a scar on my finger and she got permanent knee damage.
I can't sing the praises loud enough of therapy when it comes to handling this kind of thing
and learning how to let go and learning what grief is and learning what guilt is and how
also much they pay into each other.
I don't know.
I'm really glad that I found the person that I have to walk me through that therapeutic
process.
I'm also really glad that I found the relationship that I am now after my first marriage failed.
I learned a lot from that and I feel like that's one of the things that some people
want to run away from is looking at the loss that they've had and trying to learn from
it instead of running from the things that hurt when they think about the loss that they've
had.
There are friendships that I've made and camaraderie is that they have been constants
in this journey and then there are also friendships that wound up becoming a marriage.
There's a friendship that wound up becoming a marriage during this journey.
And some of these people who I feel that have been a huge part in my growing process, parts
that I've offered catharsis and have made me a more cogent human being, I'm getting
the chance to interview them on this podcast.
So I'm hoping you're getting the chance to hear that as well.
One of them being Todd A. Davis who without him that before mentioned book wouldn't have
happened.
So all together we're talking personal struggles, triumphs, sadness, loss, creativity, friendship,
love.
All of this just gets woven together into this tapestry.
I'm really glad I'm getting the chance to share it with you.
This is going to be a shorter episode because no one wants to hear me talk about 45 minutes
about my life but I just wanted to give you a snapshot on why I'm doing what I'm doing.
Other people need to get the chance to hear that there are normal ways to deal with grief.
There are abnormal ways to deal with loss.
None of it should really be stigmatized.
Now some of it is less than healthy such as self-medication with harder drugs, self-harm.
And if you are experiencing anything like that, I offer one the chance to talk to somebody
who will not judge you, who wants to listen, who wants to hear you as a human being who's
going through some shit.
And two, I highly suggest that if you don't want to talk to a random stranger, reach out
to your family and friends.
There's going to be a little voice inside of your head that tells you that, hey, I'm
not doing too good right now but I don't want to bother somebody with all of my problems.
Believe me when I say that they would rather be bothered with your problems than be bothered
to find out that you had done something so rash that maybe you decided to end your story
on your terms and then suddenly death becomes all about the living.
Anxiety and depression will cast their shadow.
There are times where you feel like they're just going to swallow you up.
Speak them out, get them out of your chest.
They're so much smaller out in front of you in word form than they are in that unspoken
cloud of acidity and anger and sadness that just tears away at your heart.
Talk with somebody, please.
Even if it's out to yourself, maybe in a mirror.
But I think that's it for me today.
I really, but I think that's it for me today.
Remember loss isn't just about the individual.
Sometimes it has to be a shared story and I'm really glad that these people who I'm talking
with are willing to share their stories with you.
Thank you for joining me on this personal journey.
It's been a privilege to share these chapters with my life, these abridged moments.
You're not alone.
I'm your host, Michael LeBlanc, and if you happen to miss next month's episode, still,
it's your loss.
I'll talk to you later.
Bye-bye.